Oracle 1Z0-007 exam will be retired – what does that mean to me?

Oracle Certification announced the retirement of several exams on March 13, including 1Z0-007: Introduction to Oracle9i SQL. This is one of the most popular exams Oracle offers because it satisfies the SQL requirement for multiple certification tracks. With his imminent retirement, many people have wondered what this will mean for their certification journey. In this article, I will discuss what it means based on what stage of the certification process you are in.

• Passed 1Z0-007 – If this is the case, the exam withdrawal has no effect on you. Oracle does not invalidate exam results when they are withdrawn. When withdrawing the exam, they simply set a date after which the exam will no longer be offered to new examinees. Exam 1Z0-001: Introduction to SQL and PL / SQL was dropped several years ago. However, people who passed that exam can still use it to satisfy their SQL requirements on certification tracks.
• You are currently studying for 1Z0-007 – If you have been preparing for this exam and intend to take it, you have until July 31 to do so. After that date, the exam can no longer be scheduled. I wouldn’t wait until the last few days. If something ends up preventing you from taking the exam when you plan, you won’t be able to do it after that date. This is true even if the problem is something that is not your fault, such as an outage in the test center. If you cannot take 1Z0-007 before the deadline, you will have to switch to 1Z0-051.
• You planned to study for 1Z0-007 – If you have not started the study process yet, I would recommend that you take the most recent exam, 1Z0-051: Oracle Database 11g: SQL Fundamentals I. This exam has approximately 80% in common with 1Z0-007.

When comparing the exams, the two have thirty-four topics that are either comparable or identical. Eight of the topics in 1Z0-007 do not exist in 1Z0-051. Three of them are in iSQL * Plus, which is no longer shipped with the current version of Oracle. Four of the other five that are not on exam 1Z0-051 are for minor subjects that were consolidated into more comprehensive subject areas on test 11G. Finally, a topic was taken from the fundamentals exam and placed on the SQL Expert test.

The 1Z0-051 exam has six topics that are not in 1Z0-007. Of these, three involve the use of SET operators (INTERSECT, UNION, MINUS). One topic covers the use of conditional operators (DECODE and CASE) and another covers Cartesian products. The final topic covers the structure of the Oracle table. Each of the new 1Z0-051 exam subject areas are valuable additions, making it a better test than the one it replaces.